


The Importance Of Safety And Security In The Development Of A Relationship Of The Romantic Variety

by afteriwake



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-18
Updated: 2015-06-18
Packaged: 2018-04-05 00:24:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4158567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's interesting, how they went from one night of comfort to something more, something where he realized he felt safe with her and he wasn't sure he could be without her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Importance Of Safety And Security In The Development Of A Relationship Of The Romantic Variety

**Author's Note:**

> I asked for Sherlolly prompts on Tumblr recently and I got so many excellent ones. I did a bit of an answer for one from **potterlockianegalitarian928** , who asked for fic where Sherlock realizes he feels most secure when he's with Molly, on Tumblr already, but I saw this half-finished fic that was stuck on a flash drive and felt the prompt answer would fit with it perfectly. So this is a more completed version of it for you all to enjoy!

He didn't let anyone get close. That was how he protected himself, by keeping his distance from people. Not just emotionally but physically. Letting someone get close enough to hug or give him a peck on the cheek was dangerous. It meant he had let them close enough that they could hurt him, or that he could hurt them. It meant he cared and as his brother pounded into his head time and again, caring was a disadvantage. Then John had come along and it had slowly began to change. He let more and more people close. Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, Molly...eventually Mary as well. He let these people close and thought he could have a decent life, and then he did something that changed it all over again. He knew when he stepped foot on the plane there would be no coming back. He'd said his good-byes, and while they all thought he was coming back eventually he knew that wasn't the case. He was being sent to his death, his punishment for ridding the world of a menacing cog in the machinery. He didn't regret it, not in the slightest, and that was the only reason he was at peace with it.

Almost everyone had believed him when he said he would be back. He was a good enough actor to fool nearly everyone he came in contact with. Molly had been the only one to see through the lie, though. She had read him as well as she always did, seeing just what was under the surface. When he realized she knew he was lying he asked her if it would be all right to be close, to get the comfort his other friends would be unable to provide. She had agreed, and he had spent a few hours curled up in her bed with her spooned against his back, arm draped over him, and he was comforted. And then it was time for him to leave.

He hadn't expected Moriarty to broadcast his return on every screen in the country, though. He had known John and Mary would be able to protect each other from this threat that Moriarty's return posed; they were both capable of ferocious fierceness in keeping the things they loved safe. Lestrade would be fine as well; Sherlock knew that much if he knew even the barest bit about the man. But Molly was vulnerable. Molly could defend herself in some ways, but in so many others she was a walking target, his weak spot. She knew it, because that was something they had talked about. Before he had done a single thing his brother had demanded he do to begin to address the threat he made his way to St. Bart's and he personally made sure that Molly was all right, that the people set to watch her were top notch. And even afterward, he worried. He worried until it was time to end for the night, and he found himself at the door of her flat, needing her comfort again, needing to not be alone for another night. She understood, she obliged, and he didn't leave for a long time. He didn't leave until she agreed to stay at Baker Street. For her own safety, of course, but also because he needed her close. He needed her in a way he had never expected to need anyone.

Their first kiss had been nothing spectacular and yet it had been a moment worthy of celebration as well. He'd been in the midst of a nightmare and she'd tried to wake him, tried to comfort him and while still asleep he'd rolled them over, tangled them in the sheets as he hovered over her. In his nightmare he was strangling the life out of Moriarty to keep her safe, but in reality he knew she was there, that she was the one beneath him, and she had framed his face with her hands and caressed it gently until he came out of the nightmare. There had been a connection there, and he knew if he didn't kiss her in that moment he would regret it for the rest of his life. It was a soft kiss, something simple and not at all demanding, but unlike when he'd kissed Janine there was something behind this, a feeling that screamed “this is right, this is true, this is real” in his mind. He knew then that whatever it was that was developing with Molly was a legitimate connection, an actual relationship, and not simply someone seeking comfort from someone else.

As it stood, it took him a long while to realize things sometimes. Cases and such, those solutions he realized quickly. Solutions flashed across his brain so quickly once all the pieces fell together that the speed in which it usually happened was astounding. His observations were the same way, rather like a camera taking a photo: click click click, one instant frozen just after the next, his brain processing each detail with a speed that made a regular mind as slow as an abacus compared to a supercomputer. He was used to realizing things quickly, on having something make sense immediately, and that was why emotions were so foreign to him. She helped him, though. John had been a big help, obviously, in unlocking the long dormant emotions he'd tucked away in the dark recesses of his mind palace since childhood and the harsh lessons he'd learned there on trust and love and opening oneself up, but he could only do so much. He was a friend, and while that had opened up a certain level of emotion he had felt in the past, there had been areas he had never allowed himself to explore. There was a difference in the types of emotions he felt for each of them, the depths and all of that.

She was patient as he stumbled his way through this thing she insisted was a relationship, which he saw more as a partnership, but either way meant they were together, two people drawn together through mutual attraction and respect. When things progressed to the inevitable physical intimacy that had been hinted at in the tabloids he'd thought in the back of his mind his inexperience would turn Molly away, but her patience shined through as she taught him what she knew, what worked and what didn't, as she let him try things that interested him and put practical applications into practice. He had to admit if it had been any other woman it may had been different, but since it was Molly, and since Molly knew him nearly as well as he knew himself, he found that it wasn't nearly as distasteful as he had thought it could be. He found himself eager to spend time with her, just the two of them, the world at large outside and far away.

There was more to it than that, though. He felt something when he was with her, something he was honestly not sure he'd really felt before. He felt...safe. Not safe from physical harm; Molly probably couldn't protect him if someone decided they wanted to beat him to a pulp, though she did have excellent marksmanship skills and he thought she had been taking some form of martial arts classes in her spare time, or at least the bit he wasn't taking up since her workload seemed to have increased as of late. No, he felt safe from other harm. Safe from scorn, safe from anxiety, safe from ridicule, safe from doubt, safe from the world at large. Her home was a haven and her arms were a beacon of comfort. And he had been looking for them for a long time. He felt secure with her, in a way he did with so few others yet in a way he did with no one else at all, and he was glad that he had that, had _her_ , in his life.

It had taken him time to realize it, of course, because it was emotional and things that dealt with emotions still confused him, especially _these_ emotions, the ones where he was so caught up in the intensity of them. He had felt passion before, passion for a case or for his music, but passion for _her_ was different, and it consumed him in a different way. He wanted to puzzle it out, figure out how she could inspire such intense passion with a smile or a soft kiss or a kind word, how he could want to sweep her off her feet and take her somewhere where it was just the two of them and the world could just bugger off for a while. And then it hit him. The depths of these emotions, the intensity and the changes they had wrought in him, the way his mood changed when she was near and the way he didn't want to part from her at night...it meant that Sherlock Holmes, the man who most would have said was a walking robot with no heart in his body, no warmth in his soul, was in love. And while it may have taken him some time to realize it, he was very glad he had, because he wouldn't want it any other way.


End file.
